Stateline Tasmania

Look South

AIRLIE WARD: Antarctic has captured the imagination of generations of explorers and armchair travellers. A new exhibition opening in Hobart next week will enable anyone with an interest to travel through the icy continent in airconditioned comfort. "Islands to Ice" is a permanent exhibition at the Tasmanian Exhibition and Art Gallery combining collections from from the expeditioners, donations, the now-defunct "Antarctic Adventure" and from the bowels of the museum.

JOURNALIST: Getting all the exhibits into this new space has been an engineering feet.

DAVID PEMBERTON, CURATOR: We put a big whole in the wall and brought a few things in through there. We also had to bring in the tripot. Now tripots are huge cast-iron pots that the sealers used to try out, as they called it - that is, basically boil up the blubber of an Elephant seal to get the oil out of it. This one is from Macquarie Island. The planning had to start with emptying the old galleries and getting rid of walls and all that sort of stuff. It is 450 square metres - the biggest permanent exhibition ever done by this museum. And all done in 12 months, which is phenomenal.

JOURNALIST: But maybe not as impressive as those first hardy expeditioners who headed south just a stone's throw from where the museum's tribute to their exploration is now housed. Hobart has been a stopover for over 100 years for travelers to stock up and rest before heading south.

DAVID PEMBERTON: Certainly Tasmania and its position has always helped explorers and commercial opportunities like whaling get south. It was a very handy place to come all the way from Europe, restock your supplies and head south. So there's that practical aspect. But of course, people's imaginations are taken by a place that's so hard to get to. People dream of it. It's only recently that it's become a little bit easier through the tourism developments to actually get there and see it.

JOURNALIST: The exhibition takes you on an exploration from 40 degrees south to the South Pole through the marine life of the Southern Ocean and the subAntarctic islands to Antarctica.

DAVID PEMBERTON: It's a journey basically heading south and through the time. We start with a gallery we call "Perceptions" which helps you understand how people had an idea something was down there, had an idea something was south, and it's the myths and legends around that.

JOURNALIST: The museum's taxidermist developed a massive display to help people see the abundance of life as you head south into Antarctic waters.

DAVID PEMBERTON: I might also add that they were all passively collected. Most of them have come off beached washed specimens or accidental death in a net, or something like that.

JOURNALIST: One of the challenges for the museum was getting enough relevant objects.

DAVID PEMBERTON: We haven't really collected around that topic. We had some in-house, but we also frantically started putting out the word. In fact some of our gems have turned up as donations and some have been found within our collections, which we didn't really know about.

JOURNALIST: Including the sled of Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink.

DAVID PEMBERTON: He was friends with the then director of the museum here. He was the first person to take a sled to Antarctica, he was the first person to winter there. Bernachhi was with him, so there's a strong Tasmanian connection. William Bernachhi, who grew up on Maria Island.

JOURNALIST: The 105-year-old sled was built by two Laplanders.

DAVID PEMBERTON: Who went south with Borshgrevink and hung around Hobart and there was quite a lot said about them because they got on well with the ladies. They were quite crowd stealers. They went down south to help handle the cold conditions because they knew how to do it. We suspect this sled was looked after by them and built along the lines of Lap sleds.

JOURNALIST: Mr Pemberton says the generosity from those in the Antarctic fraternity has been outstanding.

DAVID PEMBERTON: We have had amazing donations, from all the sort of memorabilia, clothing, badges, all that sort of stuff, but as well as very interesting things like Frank Debenham's globes. He was an Australian who went south with Scott and when he came back he set up the Scott Pole Institute in the UK, and he set that up in memory of Scott. One day we were actually sitting in the office saying we need a globe in this exhibition. It's all about lobes and travel and exploration. And the phone rang and this guy said, "Oh, I've got a couple of globes. Are you interested?" And they're Frank Debenham's globes. They've been donated. Beautiful pieces from around 1810.

JOURNALIST: The exhibition includes audio-visual displays and old footage. In the gallery adjacent, an art exhibition will run until mid-year. Named after a comment made by Sir Edmund Hillary, "Hell-bent for the South Pole", the works date back to the 1820s.